Pragmatics
Pragmatics constraints on language comprehension and production may be loosely thought of as the effect of context on strings of linguistic events.
Second language acquisition becomes an exceedingly difficult task when sociopragmatics of pragmalinguistic constraints are brought to bear. Kasper (1998), LoCastro (1997), Turner (1995,1996), and many other researchers have all demonstrated the difficulty of such conventions because of subtle cross-cultural contrasts. Variations in politeness and formality are particularly touchy:
American : what an unusual necklace. It’s beautiful
Samoan : please take it. (Holmes & Brown 1987:526)
American : would you like to read?
Russian student: no, I would not (Harlow 1990:328)
In both cases the non-native English speakers misunderstood the Illocutionary force (intended meaning) of the utterance within the contexts.
Pragmatics is concerned with the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context. Two kinds of contexts are relevant. The first is linguistic context – the discourse that precedes the phrase or sentence to be interpreted. Try this sentence.
Amazingly, he already left her alone
Is essentially uninterpretable. There are no referents for he and her, an the reason for amazingly is vague. But if the sentence preceeding it were John met Mary yesterday, its interpretation would be clearer.
The discourse suggests the second kind of context – situational, or knowledge of the world. To fully interpret the sentences the listener must know the real-world referents of John and Mary. The interpretation amazingly is made clear by the general belief of knowledge that a person ordinarily needs more than a day to complete the act – the completion indicated by already – of leaving her.
Situational context, then, includes the speaker, hearer, and any third parties present, along with their beliefs and their beliefs about what the others believe. It includes the physical environment, the subject of conversation, the time of day and so on, and infinitum. Almost any imaginable extralinguistic factor may, under appropriate circumstances, influence the way language is interpreted.
Pragmatics is also about language use. It tells that calling someone a son of a bitch is not a zoological opinion, it;s an insult. Because pragmatics is concerned with the interpretation and use of language in context, it may be considered part of what we call linguistic performance.
Language and Gender
One of the major pragmatic factors affecting the acquisition of communicative competence in virtually every language, and one that has received considerable attention recently is the effect of one’s sex on both production and reception of language.
Some differences in the ways males and female speak have been found through researches;
- Among American English speakers, girls have been found to produce more “standard” language than boys, a pattern that continues on through adulthood.
- Women appear to use language that expresses more uncertainty than men, suggesting less confidence in what they say.
- Men have been reported to interrupt more than women, and to use stronger expletive, while the latter use more polite forms.
These studies of language and gender, which were conducted in English-speaking cultures, will be different result in other languages. For example, Japanese women speaks in different ways (syntactic variants, intonation patterns, and nonverbal expression. So, when an English learner of Japanese learn from Japanese female teacher, he will “say things like women”, then it may become his embarrassment in conducting a business with Japanese men.
For the second language learners, it is very important to know the correlation between language and gender on the view of their target language since it will help them to gain sociopragmatic competence of the target language.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Summary of Language Acquisition Course
Left and right-brain functioning
Left and right brain dominance is significant issue in second language acquisition. As children grow up, their brains develop gradually and various functions become lateralized to the right and left hemisphere. Each hemisphere has characteristics. The right hemisphere perceives and remembers visual, tactile, and auditory images. While the left one is associated with logical, analytical thought, with mathematical and linear processing of information.
Although the hemispheres are different, but actually they operate together as “team”. Through corpus collosum, messages are sent back and forth so it is the way the both hemispheres are involved in most of the neurological activity in human brain. While the both hemispheres operating together optimally, it is the best solution to problems.
In learning second language, it is undeniable that the right and left hemispheres have important role to the success. Left-brain-dominant second language learners preferred a deductive style of teaching, while right-brain-dominant learners appeared to be more successful in an inductive classroom environment. Stevick (1982) concluded that the left-brain-dominant second language learners are better at producing separate words, gathering the specifics of language, carrying out sequences of operations, and dealing with abstraction, classification, labeling and reorganization. Right-brain-dominant learners, on the other hand, appear to deal better with whole images, with generalizations, with metaphors, and with emotional reactions and artistic expressions.
Left brain dominance
Intellectual
Remembers names
Responds to verbal instructions and explanations
Makes objective judgments
Planned and structured
Analytic reader
Prefers talking and writing
Right brain dominance
Intuitive
Remembers faces
Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or symbolic instructions
Makes subjective judgments
Fluid and spontaneous
Synthesizing reader
Prefers drawing and manipulating objects
Ambiguity tolerance
Ambiguity tolerance is related to willing to toleare ideas and propositions that run counter to your own belief system or structure of knowledge. It is a style when people face anything outside them that contradict theirs. Then, we can see two type of human; open minded or close minded. For open minded people, accept ideologies and events and facts that contradict their own views is fine. But for close minded one, they tend to reject items that are different with their existing system.
Advantages and disadvantages may appear in each style. For person who is tolerant of ambiguity are not easily distrubed cognitively or affectively by ambiguity and uncertainty but they are more creative and inovative. In second language learning, learners may meet the fact of contradictory information; words, rules or even culture that are so much different with their native language. Therefore, successful language learning requires tolerance of such ambiguities. However, too much tolerance of ambiguity can have disadvantageous effect. Such tolerance will influence people to accept any proposition they encounter, without consider efficiently the fact of their cognitive organization structure. Then it will prevent meaningful consideration of ideas. Linguistic rules, for instance, will be gulped down in meaningless chunks learned by rote but not effectively integrated into a whole system.
Intolerance of ambiguity has also advantages and disadvantages. It may guard against wishy-washiness of accepting harmful ideas, to reject entirely contradictory material, and to deal with the reality of the system that one has built. However, intolerance is easily to close mind; especially if the ambiguity is perceived as a threat; the result is dogmatic and brittle mind that so far from the creative and successful in second language learning.
Based on a few research findings, we can suggest, though not strongly so, that ambiguity may be important factor in second language learning. It is hard to imagine that person who always sees everything in black and white with no shade of gray can be successful in second language learning.
Left and right brain dominance is significant issue in second language acquisition. As children grow up, their brains develop gradually and various functions become lateralized to the right and left hemisphere. Each hemisphere has characteristics. The right hemisphere perceives and remembers visual, tactile, and auditory images. While the left one is associated with logical, analytical thought, with mathematical and linear processing of information.
Although the hemispheres are different, but actually they operate together as “team”. Through corpus collosum, messages are sent back and forth so it is the way the both hemispheres are involved in most of the neurological activity in human brain. While the both hemispheres operating together optimally, it is the best solution to problems.
In learning second language, it is undeniable that the right and left hemispheres have important role to the success. Left-brain-dominant second language learners preferred a deductive style of teaching, while right-brain-dominant learners appeared to be more successful in an inductive classroom environment. Stevick (1982) concluded that the left-brain-dominant second language learners are better at producing separate words, gathering the specifics of language, carrying out sequences of operations, and dealing with abstraction, classification, labeling and reorganization. Right-brain-dominant learners, on the other hand, appear to deal better with whole images, with generalizations, with metaphors, and with emotional reactions and artistic expressions.
Left brain dominance
Intellectual
Remembers names
Responds to verbal instructions and explanations
Makes objective judgments
Planned and structured
Analytic reader
Prefers talking and writing
Right brain dominance
Intuitive
Remembers faces
Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or symbolic instructions
Makes subjective judgments
Fluid and spontaneous
Synthesizing reader
Prefers drawing and manipulating objects
Ambiguity tolerance
Ambiguity tolerance is related to willing to toleare ideas and propositions that run counter to your own belief system or structure of knowledge. It is a style when people face anything outside them that contradict theirs. Then, we can see two type of human; open minded or close minded. For open minded people, accept ideologies and events and facts that contradict their own views is fine. But for close minded one, they tend to reject items that are different with their existing system.
Advantages and disadvantages may appear in each style. For person who is tolerant of ambiguity are not easily distrubed cognitively or affectively by ambiguity and uncertainty but they are more creative and inovative. In second language learning, learners may meet the fact of contradictory information; words, rules or even culture that are so much different with their native language. Therefore, successful language learning requires tolerance of such ambiguities. However, too much tolerance of ambiguity can have disadvantageous effect. Such tolerance will influence people to accept any proposition they encounter, without consider efficiently the fact of their cognitive organization structure. Then it will prevent meaningful consideration of ideas. Linguistic rules, for instance, will be gulped down in meaningless chunks learned by rote but not effectively integrated into a whole system.
Intolerance of ambiguity has also advantages and disadvantages. It may guard against wishy-washiness of accepting harmful ideas, to reject entirely contradictory material, and to deal with the reality of the system that one has built. However, intolerance is easily to close mind; especially if the ambiguity is perceived as a threat; the result is dogmatic and brittle mind that so far from the creative and successful in second language learning.
Based on a few research findings, we can suggest, though not strongly so, that ambiguity may be important factor in second language learning. It is hard to imagine that person who always sees everything in black and white with no shade of gray can be successful in second language learning.
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